Ack! Zemeckis and Disney remaking YELLOW SUBMARINE?!? It's all in the mind, y'know.

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Look, I love Robert Zemeckis' flicks and it's kind of appropriate that he tackle another Beatles film since his first real calling card as a director was the Beatlemania flick I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND, but YELLOW SUBMARINE is very, very dear to me.
I love the animation style, the biting satire and just plain weirdness of the original animated movie and I worry that remaking it will lose one of those key elements that made the original work so well.
So, I'm a bit nervous. Disney and Zemeckis are quietly closing a deal on the remake which will have Zemeckis doing his performance capture thing in recreating the Blue Meanies' invasion of Pepperland... in 3-D.
My skittishness aside, if Zemeckis can bring all the weirdness over and bring some new ingredients to make a new, improved tasty dish then this could be a brilliant move. It's tricky stuff is all I'm saying. I mean, as weird and trippy and surface level as the original cartoon movie appears to be, my heart still breaks for Jeremy Hilary Boob during the Nowhere Man number.
Mike Fleming's blog at Variety, where the story broke, mentions a team of lawyers surrounding this deal, including a post-film staging on Broadway. The hope is to have the film ready to premiere 2012... hopefully before we all fall into the ocean like the Mayans and Roland Emmerich predict.
My last words on this... Robert Zemeckis, sir... if you're going to do this and bring your A Game and make this worthy or the original... please incorporate the original closing footage of the movie. I know that sounds like a distraction in the making, but since you can't recreate the original Fab Four throwing us out to All Together Now in live action I think it'd be a nice nod to them and their fans.
Thems my thoughts. Yours?

The original was a product of its time and everything about the film's look and design reflects that period. Yellow Submarine was quite a hit with both familys and college kids because of the Beatles' enormous popularity at the time of release. The only way I see this working is to do 3-D CGI to the soundtrack of the original, creating a shot-by-shot remake of the film with modern technology. Like what Van Sant tried with Psycho. But I cannot see this having any box-office appeal, except to us Beatle fans. Kids today could care less about a band from 40 years ago.

He doesn't want to deal with real humans, so he quit working with them. Now we the audience suffer through these awful digital movies with synthetic actors. While wondering how much better (Beowulf) this movie would have been with real live human actors.

Instead of 3-D Glasses, there should be an usher (In a dirty uniform of course) offering you a choice of Pot, Shrooms, Syrup, Crack, Needles, Weed or Cocaine and a rolled up 20 dollar bill before each screening.

for the love of everything sacred and true STOP THIS MADNESS! Sincerly, I've had just about enough. Is there any doubt that all of his mo-cap flicks would have been vastly improved had he instead just gone with live action? I mean what's the point of spending untold fortunes trying to make cartoons look and move exactly like photo realistic humans? You know what you could do , now just hear me out on this, is just go film (NOT record! FILM!) real genuine human being, authentic costumes and settings and then simply add the impossible through CG means. Revolutionary concept, I know (shaking my raised hands together side-to-side in self congratulatory victory {err...is there a word for that?})<p> And leave the Beatles alone, haven't they been ravaged enough already (julie taymor)? <p> Just give me a Pink Floyd inspired film directed by Tarsem, THAT would be cool news.

that seems pretty pointless. this was their movie, they starred in it. it be as retarded as remaking an Elvis movie and using an impersonator. so what, they're gonna cast voice actors who can sound like them?

I feel a stinker coming our way. But you just never know. And for Beatles haters, I have three kids, ages 34 to 9. They know who the Beatles are/were. They recognize their songs. They like The Beatles. Whether a remake or a brand new movie, they will want to watch it because, at the very least, the music will be excellent. Now, if this movie sucks, then it will be because of the folks behind the cameras or script or the actors themselves, NOT because of the music, which is timeless.

I know what you're going to say: "but Zemeckis hasn't made a watchable film in nearly 20 years!" Well hold the phone. We're talking about a man who made films that defined our youth. When you say that to me, it's like you're insulting my daddy. I don't know why daddy changed, why he does the things he does, but he's still my daddy and I will always love him. I'll keep paying for his movies. I'll go see Yellow Submarine 3D with sincere hope in my heart, and then one day he will notice me and smile, like he used to, and begin production on Roger Rabbit 2. Everything will be just like it was.

Why couldn't they animate a fantasy based on a visonary modern band like Goldfrapp or something. I'm sick of endless remakes of remakes but I'm especially tired of remakes of stuff from the 60s! LET IT GO!

Bouncy X, the original "Yellow Submarine" did not feature the voices of the actual Beatles. They were actors who didn't actually sound that much like the real thing.
That said, I think remaking it is a bad idea. Just let it be (see what I did there?).

Fuck Zemeckis. All he cares about is technology. He doesn't give a shit about storytelling anymore. Beowulf was terrible and I have a feeling that A Christmas Carol is going to blow as well. Leave the fucking Beatles alone, Rob. You're just going to fuck it up.

There are some rather intellegent people dwelling the fringes here I do portend. Can anyone help with this query?: <p> Is there a word or phrase that discribes the action of shaking clasped hands together in the air from side-to-side in self-congratulatory victory? You know what I'm getting at here, right? Like you'd see Spanky do in The Little Rascals or something. I'm thinking there must be a word for that, no? <p> If some wiser, kinder gentleperson know the answer, I beg please do share your enlightenment. The quest for absolution on this is beginning to drive me positively batty. Come on, don't hold out on me, I'm frothing at the mouth here!

...and count me in as clueless as to what the hell is going on in Bob's head these days...but he did give us Back to the Future and Used Cars. I'll damned though if Death Becomes Her wasn't one of the worst times I've had in movie theatre, ever....and I saw the Howard the Duck opening night from the front row balcony at the Uptown and survived to tell the tale.

I kinda want to cry thinking about this. I'm all for spreading the unbridled joy that is the music of the Beatles, and understand we all can't go see 'Love,' but this really needs to not happen. Make a movie of the Cirque show before you wreck a perfectly good little piece of Beatle history. Much like 'Tommy' on broadway, I am not into bastardizing great music to repurpose it for new masses. If I have to hear some lame (insert cheesy radio act here) cover of 'Hey Bulldog' I'm gonna be quite cross.

Yeah, Back to the Future/Roger Rabbit blah blah blah, I loved those movies as a kid too but I am fucking tired of Zemekis as he has made nothing but shit for over a decade and is now fucking obsessed with doing nothing but cartoons with deadeyed CGI zombies. You know there are libraries filled with books that haven’t been adapted you illiterate asshole!!!

It's not about mo-cap, or new technology. It's about taking a classic movie with absolutely nothing wrong with it and thinking "oh, I can do better." Wrong! I have a great deal of respect for Zemeckis and Disney's animation department, but this is the most fucking awful idea I have ever heard.

Without the Beatles tie-in, would most people know or are about YELLOW SUBMARINE? No. So how can you remake a film about the stars, but without the stars? What is this SEINFELD-esque bullshit idea? This is lightning that cannot be bottled a second time.

With budgets becoming soo huge, Hollywood is desperate to get more people back into the theatres and they think that 3D will bring them in but it doesn’t mean fuck all if you don’t have a good story!!! But people like James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemekis and Peter Jackson are also trying to sucker the theatres chains and studios into releasing 3D movies. 3D theatres are a pipe dream to justify charging people $20 to $25 just to see a fucking movie, well, no fucking thanks because I’d rather wait two or three months for the fucking DVD not to mention that it’s going to be very costly for theatres to operate such equipment and repair it.<br> <br>Keep it right up Hollywood and you’ll only run yourselves into the tar pit even faster you fucking morons.

And that film, SPICE WORLD, was widely loathed when it hit cinemas.
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The difference, of course, is that YELLOW SUBMARINE uses Beatles songs. Are they going to strip the Beatles songs from a YELLOW SUBMARINE film? Somehow I doubt it.

Contact is an underrated sci-fi film about ideas, like they used to be. It's not perfect but it's brave and enigmatic. Say what you will about Gump, but it is still much loved and tapped a thread in America and worldwide that may never be tapped again. (And I always like to point out that in adjusted numbers and ticket sales it did quite a bit better than Dark Knight. I love the screaming berating fanboy reaction to that fact.) Cast Away was a fine piece of entertainment and quite daring and experimental in it's own way.

"Yellow Submarine" is perfect as is: a record of how the Beatles were seen, way back when they were together. Digitally restore it if you want, convert it to 3D if you must, but otherwise let it the fuck be ... If you must "re-make" something, how about re-conceiving an animated, expanded, totally whacked-out "Magical Mystery Tour?" ... Oh, and use the animators who created that astonishing "Beatles RockBand" promo-- keep Zemeckis's pedestrian, super-square paws OFF OF IT.

Believe it or not the legendary Beatles have sold more cd's than any band over the last ten years. As a matter of fact the only person who has sold more records than the Beatles this decade is Eminem. Not bad for a band that hasn't made an album since 1970. THE BEATLES ARE THE BIGGEST ACT OF ANY KIND,EVER + IT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE.
http://www.justpressplay.net/music/music-news/5458-beatles-still-the-biggest-rock-band-in-the-world.html

Except for the licensing and the last-minute addition of a live-action cameo at the end, the Beatles weren't creatively involved with the original Submarine movie. John, Paul, George and Ringo were played by voice actors John Clive, Geoffrey Hughes, Peter Batten and Paul Angelis.
<p> Kindly check out the videogame promo I pasted at the end of the post and tell me a great new animated movie couldn't be forged using some of the greatest rock music ever forged.

Nearly 50 years on and the Beatles are still the biggest band in the world. http://www.justpressplay.net/music/music-news/5458-beatles-still-the-biggest-rock-band-in-the-world.html Imagine how huge an album and tour by the Beatles (if they were all alive + well) would be today. For Christ sakes McCartney has sold out stadiums in America by himself over the last month. The Beatles popularity and influence towers over people like Michael Jackson and U2. There will never be anything as big as The Beatles.

Yes, like Herc said. That "RockBand" promo is the best effort I've seen of a new artist capturing the spirit of The Beatles ... And while we're on the subject, let me just say, Julie "Walrus Puke" Taymor can go stuff her "Universe" travesty you know where. That shit film belongs in the same corner of hell as that '78 Bee Gees movie.

I don't have a problem with CGI like some people but if I want to watch a fucking cartoon then I WILL DO SO!!! How would CGI mocap improve a movie like Fail Safe, Talk Radio, Network? THEY FUCKING WOULDN'T and it's because those movies were about people unlike the cartoonish shit that Zemekis has been pumping out for years!!!

didn't completely convey my feelings towards this issue. to reiterate: FUCK YOU HOLLYWOOD!<p>
and quint: you know this future piece of shit will be nothing like the rockband intro. first of all: in that one the beatles are 2d animated, what zemeckis wants to do is turn them into zombified corpses. the idea alone to see john lennon walking around in zemeckozombie form gives me such a bad case of the creeps i almost have to throw up. <p>i... i... words fail me. <p>STOP THIS TRAVESTY NOW YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS! <p>
news like these make me pray for a nuclear terror attack on hollywood.

"Say what you will about Gump, but it is still much loved and tapped a thread in America and worldwide that may never be tapped again. (And I always like to point out that in adjusted numbers and ticket sales it did quite a bit better than Dark Knight.) " Wait, FORREST GUMP made a profit? You better tell Paramount since they still claim it lost money (to avoid giving points to the writer of the book.)

99% of Beatles-related stuff is such over the past couple of decades- the Vegas circus shit, the Rock Band game, etc. The legacy of the band remains untarnished by all of this exploitation, which really is a testament to the music. But this is yet another silly (but effective) way to get money.

Agreed. Even they hated it.<p>However, a full movie of all the classic songs (ie, not Yellow Submarinf et al) done like the Rock Band promo delivered in 3D Imax with THX. Yep, I'm there!<p>If that boring little fuck Bono can get away with it, the Fab Four should have no problem...

Everytime he sees you, it's like "Hey, try this! You'll love it!" and he won't accept it when you tell him you have tried it and didn't like it.<p>Hawk your parlour tricks elsewhere, young Robert, nobody here is interested...

How about a mo-cap adaptation of Los Lobos' KIKO AND THE LAVENDER MOON? It would be a hundred times more imaginative and interesting than a YELLOW SUB rehash. Why not do KIKO? Oh, right, because the Beatles have a built-in audience that will cushion a shitty movie at the box office. Not that it helped ACROSS THE UNIVERSE.

...to answer someone's question from earlier. You know, I don't understand why people get their noses so out of joint when it comes to remakes. The only reason to get up in arms over it would be if they destroyed every last copy of the original. When a band covers another band's song, does anyone get this upset? It's possible that a remake of any movie can bring joy and entertainment to people. And isn't that the whole point?

The whole point is to make money, unless they're doing it to fulfill an artistic vision, not a corporate one. The only films not based on older material that Zemeckis has directed in the last fifteen years or so were both released in 2000, and Cast Away always pissed me off when Tom Hanks spent all that time on an island and didn't once think of changing his name to Oliver Queen and making his way back to Star City in order to enforce his liberal ways by shooting arrows into people in the middle of the night...y'know, Green Arrow doesn't make any fucking sense...

Thanks for telling me what my job is. Here I was under the delusion that my job was to comment on the news for the last 13 years. If only you could have come in sooner I wouldn't have wasted so much time getting paid to do exactly what it is you say isn't my job!

...don't "re=imagine" Yellow Submarine. Herc is right, that X-Box promo is brilliant. In fact, avoid the 11 songs from YELLOW SUBMARINE and use stuff from the rest of the catalog. String it together with a thin connective narrative, shoot it in IMAX 3-D and blammo, you got a mega-hit. Finish it off with Paul and Ringo in a screening room chattin' it up with the audience and leave the crowd singing... Done! Just don't re-do YELLOW SUBMARINE, been there, done that...

What a putz. I cling to the fact that he did Used Cars, but he is SOOOOOO FAR from anything cool. Put down the friggin' tech toys and leave the 3D crapola alone. Remake, remake, remake. LAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

with the movie across the universe, hot teen actors, retooled the songs, all beatle, it had some trippy sequences, and it bombed at the box office, the thing that gave hope that the beatles were save from more movies interpretations.
The difference with the rockband promo is that looks amazing because it is traditional animation: fluid,stylized has charm arm warmth everything mocap doesn't have.
Zemeckis is going to lucas territory, bright visionary director that lost it, and just makes technocrap.

Kind of ironic this being done with Disney, as I remember some commentary from the original animators stating that one of the reasons that the film looks like it does is that they were trying very hard to NOT look like Disney animation at the time. <br><br>
That said, I can keep an open mind. As the RockBand animation shows, there is no way to tell at the moment WHAT it would look like.

...should make the movie of Mike Allred's Red Rocket 7. That would be the greatest cosmic, animated, musical journey movie ever made. And the soundtrack would be amazing. And then they could make a Rockband game of it on Xbox.<p>
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Fuck Yellow Submarine. And fuck Robert Zemeckis.

Though the Beatles had nothing to do with the original except the ending and donating some B-side material, could you imagine the reaction of John Lennon? I can't imagine George harrison would be much excited about it a "remake". I like to think McCartney and Starr are throwing up right now, but they tend to play nice with others in public. This is a horrible, horrible idea and one of the laws of existance is you don't fuck with The Beatles. Period.

*sigh*
OK I was going to get really pissed off about this, but if you get pissed off about every remake that Hollywood decides to put out these days you'll end up in a permanent state of fury and life's too short so...
Get Jamie Hewlett involved and have a crack at a new story instead and they might be on to something.

Because they take every opportunity to tell us about how they make a living writing about movies. I guess the trade off is that you need to be morbidly obese, always unshaven with poor personal hygiene.

Yes, you could make a great animated Beatles movie, but really without John and George I don't see the point. You might not need their blessings, but I for one would feel much better if the group said yay or nay and not just rely on Paul and Ringo or the "sheer genius" of Hollywood.

...is that when the original came along, it was pretty much a one-of-a-kind big-screen experience, nothing that trippy had been animated before. But today, we are inundated, surrounded and overwhelmed with such visual eyeball-fuckings on a monthly basis - from computer games, via the latest Pixar, to the Coca Cola commercials. There really is no need for a remake, just because we now have 3D CGI motion cap technology. I still get "wowed" more by the original "Yellow Submarine", on a purely visual level, than I do with, say, "The Polar Express". Sorry Robert, but I'd say your idea is a fail and you should invest your energies somewhere else.

The latter part of the trailer, with the big blue Ganesh stomping over a cliff wearing the Beatles and surrounded by an overwhelming mass of chirping whateverthefucks? Works for me visually and metaphorically, cuz as far as I'm concerned that's what Beatles fans have been doing for 40 years. As for whether it ruins the preexisting movie? I dunno...depends on how much you're in love with 40+ years ago. As far as I'm concerned, the best Beatles song album is an original on "Yellow Submarine"--"Hey Bulldog" haunted my very young childhood and still does 30-some years later. The rest of the soundtrack is mostly retreads of existing stuff. I still love the idea of Apple Bonkers and Blue Meanies, but it's not like they can't be translated into 3D CGI, is it?<p>
Honestly, sometimes Old People need to stop focusing on shit half a century old and move on or get out of the way--at least as much so with music as with movies, maybe more.

No, that's my part time job... A fella's got scrape a living somehow. And I don't try to rub this job in everybody's faces all the time, dude. I realize how lucky I am to be doing something I love. No need to make it personal, man.

was one of my childhood favorite animated films. I refuse to see this.
The Mona Lisa may as well be repainted and exhibited in museums around the world. Fuck you Zem, fuck you. When people bring you up now,
I have nothing kind to say.

Your Wrong, Booze yes Drugs no. I like the beatles though I was born after they split Heck I also like Glenn Miller. Perhaps the pole that rated the Beatles top band since Woodstock even though they didn't play at Woodstock helped get this green lit. All you Beatles haters take note Beatlemania still holds just look at the popularity of the Love show in Las Vegas.

that "Motion Capture" is about as exciting and artistic as Rotoscoping was?<br /><br /> Either make an animated film or don't.<br /><br />And having the actor go through the time and trouble of actually being made up and dressed to play different characters will always be more visually interesting than just using their voice and body language and a bunch of CGI.<br /><br />Unless you're Doug Jones or Andy Serkis playing an otherworldly creature that can't otherwise be visualized, I don't see the need for "motion capture". <br /><br />Patrick Stewart already played all the characters in A Christmas Carol. Onstage. Using just his voice and acting abilities and maybe a couple of props. Actors have been doing one person shows like that for centuries. It's about "emotion capture" Mr. Zemeckis.

Besides being a pointless and stupid idea, I can't see it happening because the estates of John & George much less Paul or Ringo will not let it go forward. The band may not have had involvement in the visuals but almost all the places and characters save for the Meanies are from the songs. If they don't want it to happen, it won't. Z is probably looking at ways to do it so he can approach the band and try to sell the ideas.

Using songs from the White Album and Abbey Road, done in the visual style of the Beatles Rock Band opening animatic. A mix of wierd Yellow Subariney flat 2d animation and sumptuous 3d cgi backgrounds. And actually animate the story of "Lucy in the Sky" instead of rotoscoping ballroom dancers. Seriously, that's the very worst part of the original movie. The Beatles didn't voice the characters in the first one, so ... whatever. The Walrus has spoken. ggg'j (;{=

You can defend it all you want and use the "oh, he'll bring something new to it" BULLSHIT! This movie was initially made as a "throwaway contractual obligation" movie, but the team decided not to take it lying down and made something special. You can NOT re-create this! Robert Zemeckis is an ass and has lost ALL credibility with me if he goes through with this!

I have that shit on Blu-Ray. It's a good story and makes interesting use of the Beatles songs. And as far as musicals go, my standards are high. First dvd I bought was the recalled Little Shop dvd with alternate ending. 179 fuckin bucks on ebay.
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Worth Frank Oz' commentary. Very underrated film.

And this guy was the real deal and now it appears this great director is only in making tremendous bank off of kids and adults who did cartoons. This really bums me out b/c there for awhile I'd put him up against anybody and could say he's just as talented.

..And find Liverpool to be a shithole (worked there for several years) I can't deny that the Yellow Submarine was a great piece of animation - simply because it's so fucking trippy. Disney can't do trippy. Every inch of it's soul will be destroyed. If however it looks like that Beatles:Rock Band trailer I would happily put my hatred of the beatles to one side to enjoy those lush visuals because that was fucking amazingly beautiful and I will now look into who produced it.

YELLOW SUBMARINE is one of my favorite animation movies of all time. The weirdness was creepy for me at times but also fun. The whole look of the movie was just awesome. I can’t imagine any one even TRYING to capture that felling unless its Cirque Du Soleil doing it, otherwise its not going to work. Fuck! How many shitty remakes have been done and how many have ACTUALLY been good?!?!? Hell, there have been only a few of them that were even decent. But remaking this one and using mo-cap especially will certainly fuck it. Wasn’t every thing exaggerated as a satire? And making it mo-cap will just take that element out, plus you can’t remake something as freaky and fun as YELLOW SUBMARINE. I would prefer just something new. To be honest, I think this is just one of the worst ideas that Hollywood has ever come up with. Must there be a petition signed by over a million fans stating that the REHASHING aka “remaking,” or “re-imagining” of classic movies should be outlawed and any attempt of producing one is punishable by death; fans will stone every single dickhead that is involve with it. Come up with something new and original. STOP WITH THE REHASHING!